Harry Potter Party

In case you all don’t know, I am obsessed with Harry Potter. Somewhere along the way, my oldest niece became obsessed as well and asked for a Harry Potter birthday party. It was a little out of the blue since she was turning 12 and had never asked for elaborate birthday details before, but I certainly had a blast creating a few small Harry Potter details for her. Plus, it seemed right – for her golden birthday, she got golden snitches! {Yes, I know I’m dork. I did name my blog The Love NERDS.}

Before going into all the details and pictures, I want to say that this is not an elaborate Pinterest Party. You will not see fancy backdrops {just my mom’s green kitchen walls} or an impossible cake you can’t make yourself. All of the details of this party were created and implemented in 4 days and are very doable. Here at The Love Nerds, we believe in making moments matter. My niece asked for Harry Potter, so she got Harry Potter. However, we also believe in realistic inspiration and not killing yourself over one day. Hopefully you will see these details and realize that you can make all of them – or let them spark even more elaborate ideas in your heads!

Now – to Harry Potter!!

Honeydukes Sweets: A section of my mom’s counter was dedicated to lots of candy and other handmade goodies, like the chocolate dipped pretzel wands and the cockroach clusters. All food names came straight from the book. I am sharing with you blank versions of the labels I made as well as Honeyduke printable paper.

Three Broomsticks: First, I made the sign for Three Broomsticks which you can print! Then, I found these awesome free printables at Over the Big Moon, so I removed labels on the pop to create Pumpkin Juice out of Fanta and Elf Made Wine out of coke. Plus, we made Butter Beer (both frozen and non-frozen). More below about that!

Potions Class: This was created solely for fun and served no actual purpose at the party. We spent time thinking about what would work for potions ingredients, such as canned spaghetti for Blood Worms, dyed water for Dream Fluid, and cocktail onions for Blind Cat Eyes. My niece LOVED this trip to the grocery store. We also reused the sparkles from her cake as Goblin Gold Dust.

My favorite and NERDIEST detail of the whole party is that Potions Book. The outside was a copy of the cover of the actual potions books from the movie: Libatius Borage’s Advanced Potion Making. I found a picture online, printed it at the right size and taped it to the outside of a book. THEN, using a still from the movie, I made a replica of the inside of the book. {The more I type, the more I realize this is probably the nerdiest thing I have ever done, but I also really love it!} Because I love you all though, I am sharing it with you for personal use only – Page 1 and Page 2.

Ollivanders Wands: Both D and I have real Olivander wands, so you see hers displayed in this picture. We were going to make more wands for all the kids to take home using wooden dowels, hot glue and spray paint, but we didn’t have enough time. There are lots of tutorials on Pinterest though for making your own wands if you haven’t bought your own wands like us nerds.

Chocolate Frogs: How can you have a Harry Potter party without Chocolate Frogs? I bought this Chocolate Frog Candy Mold on Amazon for around $6 and followed traditional candy mold procedure to make these. General rule – if you use milk chocolate, you will need to keep them refrigerated as much as possible. What I did like is after they say out for a little bit, they looked {but weren’t actually} just a tinge slimy!

Golden Snitches: The snitches are made from truffles! The actual flavor of truffle doesn’t matter. Nor does perfection. You can see that I have not mastered the art of perfectly rounding truffles below. See – real life, not Pinterest Perfect. 😉

I used the edible gold spray paint and then sprinkled them on top with edible gold glitter. The spray paint did a good job covering the chocolate color and was a needed base coat. The glitter made them sparkle. I used Wilton Gum Paste to cut out the wings, let them dry, and added spray and glitter to them as well. To attach the wings to the truffles, I let the truffles sit own on the counter for a little bit so they would get soft. Then, I used a small knife to make a very small cut and pushed the corner of a wing into that cut. This would not be doable if the truffles were right out of the fridge.

Butter Beer: There are lots of recipes out there for Butter Beer and many are VERY complicated. When I was told to constantly stir ingredients for 3o minutes, I was out. I am sure they are delicious, but I didn’t have time {or really want to}. I went with simple.

Take a 2 liter of cream soda and add 2 tablespoons Butter Extract and 1 teaspoon Rum Extract. We poured straight into the 2 liter and just carefully twirled it around to mix all the ingredients together.

To FREEZE it, we mixed the ingredients, put them all in a bowl and let it sit in the freezer. We did it over night but it could be done early in the morning.

What is Frozen Butter Beer without an awesome mug to drink it out of! I made a few Harry Potter mason jar mugs that were Harry Potter themed. My niece got “I heart Draco”, I had “HP + HG” in a heart {because they should have ended up together}, and my sister got “Always” with the “A” being the Deathly Hallows symbol. We bought the mugs at Joann and what I loved about them is they were completely smooth on the outside which made working with vinyl super easy.

The Cake: The cake was a 2 layer round chocolate cake with Cool Whip “icing” dyed purple. I cut out the Hogwarts “H” on my silhouette, which was used as a stencil to add the gold sparkles. I then made 4 flag banners for each house. My B-I-L cut down a wooden dowel for me as the posts and I cut the banners themselves out on paper.

And that’s it! Is that enough details for you?! I did also cut out checkered flags in the house colors and use them as a banner outside, but I didn’t get a picture for some reason. We also consider adding a sign in the bathroom that said Flush for the Ministry, but it didn’t happen. We also considered making a large poster sign with the middle cut out that said Azkaban Prisoner and such, but it didn’t happen. And you know what? She still had fun! There are so many ideas to make happen but I just stopped when creating the party stopped being fun.

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Comments

What a fun party, to bad I wasn’t invited. I love those frogs! I want that mold, how cute! I’d love it if you added this post to my link up if your interested. The other hosts & I repin all of the posts linked up. I hope you have a great Wednesday!

OMG! I love all the details about this party! We’ve posted 31 things every Harry Potter fan should do, and this would totally fit in! I was also reminiscing as I read your remarks about not being “pinterest perfect” because I just posted about that for my son’s birthday party! Loved this post, love all the pictures, love all the details…my birthday is coming up (and while I’m not turning 12) I would love to recreate this party for my party!

I am so in love with this party! You did an amazing job and I love all the little touches that really put the theme over the top. It’s awesome! The only thing I don’t like is the HP + HG. I’m a RW + HG fan. haha 😉

I love all the details for this Harry Potter party! Even though I’m a child-free adult in my 30s, I would love to have a party like this for my birthday. Seriously, too fun! I’m so glad you shared this at The Weekend re-Treat; I’m definitely keeping this post handy!